This work is critical, as without level and stable sub-flooring, you’ll experience all kinds of difficulty with your flooring. Risks involved including anything from slight tripping hazards (non-level flooring) to additional element exposure (uneven connections between pieces). This can be annoying, as dust, dirt, and crumbs can get into the subfloor, or it can be dangerous when moisture gets in.
Why We Use Schonox For Atlanta-Area Projects
Thus our job is to ensure that the subfloor is ready and prepared when the main project starts. We actually just completed two major projects where our competitors could not take them on; they didn’t have the skills or capacity to repair the sub-flooring. However, the experienced team at Professional Installed Floors was able to handle the sub-flooring situation, then complete the job into a beautiful remodel.
What Is Sub-Flooring?
When we talk about sub-flooring, don’t get it confused with a home’s underlayment. Underlayment is a layer of softer material that goes between the sub-floor and the actual flooring material. The underlayment provides a number of functions: it cushions for a more comfortable walk (consider how your back feels after hours of standing on concrete or pavement versus being in a home; there’s a noticeable difference) and it also absorbs things like thermal properties and sound. Underlayment is often constructed from foam, felt, or similarly soft and durable materials.
Beneath that is the sub-floor, which provides two primary functions. First, it acts as a structural layer to support activity within a home. Second, it keeps things level and stable so that flooring materials can be cleanly installed. A home can actually feature multiple sub-floor layers depending on a variety of needs; this is often decided by the architect during a home’s initial construction, though flooring experts can easily be brought into consult during a major repair or remodel project.
The most common types of sub-floor materials include:
- Wood: Sturdy and traditional, wood sub-floors are made from planks and installed using a nail-down method, typically over concrete.
- Plywood: Perhaps the most typical sub-floor currently used by home builders, plywood is affordable and flexible. Plywood is created through a manufactured process that uses an epoxy to adhere wood strands and fibers together.
- Oriented Strand Board (OSB): OSB materials cost more than plywood but in terms of strength, it is the preferred sub-floor of many home builders. OSB is fabricated in a similar fashion to plywood but the overall material is denser. The result is a stronger sub-floor that is less susceptible to moisture.
We mentioned underlayment, and that’s certainly a critical part of it — not just for the initial installation but also for patching and repairing subfloors. For those projects, we like to work with Schonox.
Why We Choose Schonox
Our preferred vendor for sub-flooring materials is Schonox. In fact, we use it almost exclusively for leveling and sealing both slabs and wood sub-floors. The projects mentioned above that required repair prior to installation? Both of those used Schonox sub-floor. This is why we trust them:
Experience: Schonox was founded more than 125 years ago in Germany, so it’s a trusted name in European construction and flooring for a long, long time. In the late 1990s, a flooring-industry veteran named Thomas Trissl helped usher in the Schonox brand to North America. Together, Trissl and Schonox have maximized distribution and reach on this continent, and the result makes Schonox a leading trusted provider of sub-floor solutions in the industry.
Products: Schonox’s product line spans the need of all sub-flooring solutions. This includes primers, repair mortars, floor leveling compounds, and adhesives. These products are designed from decades of hands-on experience — and Schonox’s experts aren’t just tucked away in an office; they go out to the field, see how others in the flooring industry use their products, and constantly receive feedback to push their products to greater heights. Longevity only comes with quality, and the fact that Schonox has been around for more than a century demonstrates this commitment to continuous improvement.
A Green Commitment: Schonox is dedicated to environmentally friendly practices on all levels — energy-efficient production processes, preventative planning to maximize green practices, waste avoidance at all stages of production, and saving critical resources (energy, water, and raw materials).
The Cutting Edge Of Technology: For professionals in the flooring industry, Schonox makes it easy for assessing needs on the job with the company’s app. The app offers two critical types of calculations. First, entering the layout of a space will calculate how much of a specific product must be purchased to finish the project. Second, if you’re considering how much inventory you have of a specific product, entering that into the app will tell you how much potential flooring you can cover with it. Speaking strictly from experience, this makes assessing budget and time for a job significantly easier. It doesn’t just cut down on guesswork; this type of precision ensures more accurate and faster assessments by eliminating manual interpretations and number crunching.
Schonox’s sub-flooring materials range from underlayment materials to tools used for repair/patching to primers and moisture systems. These materials are key, regardless of whether you use wood, plywood, or OSB; without quality materials, you could wind up with flooring that’s not level or tightly fit, which opens the door to many issues. Schonox helps this come together faster, better, and at a more affordable price.
What is Possible?
If you’re considering a floor remodel project and have damaged sub-floors, we’ve got good news for you. Our experienced team at Professional Installed Floors knows how to handle sub-floor repair situations, and our reputation with Atlanta-area customers has exceeded expectations time and again.
1. There are three ways to get started:
2. Send our team an email through our contact form.
3. Drop by our Marietta showroom at 3372 Canton Road, Suite 102, Marietta 30066.
Schedule no obligation, free in-home estimate by calling us at 770-627-4343.
